Matilda 3
by apelle
Summary: And, in a sky crowded with stars, she saw constellations like traces of footsteps footsteps that disappeared when she blinked.


Matilda finished her coffee and reached for the cigarettes she kept hidden in a drawer. Keeping them hidden was as pointless as smoking them...she stopped getting pleasure from smoking cigarettes years before. And hiding them? A polichinelle secret: open and unmentionable.

"It's my birthday," she reminded herself.

"Have a glass of port and go for a walk...think about everything your life means. Then come back and carry on."

Those were her father's words. A stoic, he never celebrated birthdays and had no tolerance for melodrama. His take on life and love was rigid and unbendable, like the stiff timbers he brought home at night when he was building their house.

He would recoil in disapproval if he knew she was seeing Saul, the thought made her raise an eyebrow. An undercurrent of submissive desire to please her father flowed in her veins, as if she was a little girl again.

Once, when she was in art school, her father paid an unannounced visit. At the time she'd moved out of the school dormitory and lived in a cheap Paris tenement patronized by ladies of the night. A large woman watched the front desk and the common baths. Her father asked the woman where the bathroom was. Her response in trashy French made Matilda laugh when she remembered the incident.

"At the end of the hall. Make sure you knock on the door. If somebody says come in,don't."

Still in her robe puffing her pleasureless cigarette her thoughts drifted with the smoke in search of the escape of an open window.

Saul was cynical,smiled condescending when she argued a point or ventured a theory. His disregard angered her and fueled battles that stretched into the wee hours of the night.

What he never admitted was how Matilda's passion was cathartic,an aphrodisiac traveling through his blood like opium, lighting smoldering fires in the green pits of his eyes and warming his bones. They wrestled and danced the indecent, sacred, coital dance of pleasure and primitive desire after every argument.

Somehow it worked and they lived in chaotic harmony.

There is an out of tune scale, love climbs or plummets in accordance with a sketch of melody. Matilda's many kinds of love and many ways of feeling affection traveled up and down with an imaginary score.

Her crazy eyes, eyes that cut through dreams, and her haughty, pneumatic walk were irresistible to Saul. If he was destined to live alongside one female, she was the one.

She knew he was a twisted kind of misogynist, at once likable and detestable but a perfect foil for her awakening sexuality.

And, Saul painted well. She said he painted souls.

He started with chalk on sidewalks. Orphaned at a very early age, he slept on the streets for many years. His fortunes changed when a decent couple adopted him. Once he discovered the love and comforts of home, he slept at night with ink and tubes of paint under his pillow.

Occasionally, on waking, Matilda was deeply stirred to find a new, colorful painting resting by her bed, Saul's blends of nature and sky were a joy to her eyes. And, at night, when things were good, she could hear his colors dancing between her sheets, leading to a glorious morning soaked in dewy, colorful light.

After Saul left her life, Matilda had many questions and found so very few answers. She found no useful guidance in philosophy, sociology, psychology, science or religion, in fact, her studies added maddening complexity to her thoughts, the more she knew, the farther away ultimate answers seemed.

Her thoughts and recollections were incessant cries in a parallel universe; her thoughts were filled with crazy tangents.

How sweet the apple of truth?

How bitter the memories?

Why?

Living with the ins and outs of her mind, she discovered lost secrets in a gray box of letters and photographs.

Remember that November, a couple of years after Saul ?

Sure she did. They sat in a car...Matt's arm was around her shoulders. His skin smelled faintly of guilt, basal, exciting guilt...voluptuous and indescribable.

The engine died and clicked while cooling. Possibilities filled the air.

She followed his eyes as they wandered up and down her legs.

"I'd like to know your story," he said.

Her voice was a whisper, as if her existence should be a secret.

"My story? What makes you think I have one?"

Later, they drank wine...slowly. With each sip, the tart liquid fueled their pleasure. Unhindered, lazy energies moved through bare, random patches of skin. The evening ended with cooling dampness and whispered conversation in the dark.

That night, the flower under her left shoulder flourished wrapping its stalk around their bodies, increasing its diameter to allow each move. It finally became flat as a palm with its fingers opened, ready to catch the flow of fire cells looking for an escape. Her heart swelled with fiery cells. Passion crammed her mad pit of memories and hope filled her horizon like a fleeting glimpse of Mount Everest.

Why is passion always the cruel deceiver?

Whatever they had was faint, like drifting smoke from a faraway grass fire.

In bed, his eyes were closed against the morning light. The silent room felt deserted and filled with guilty stillness.

After sex, Saul told her stories. Usually he claimed to be the living embodiment of the biblical Saul, but that did not stop him from making other equally unlikely claims, like being the literal offspring of Saul Katzenellenbogen, the mystical Polish temporary king...rex pro tempore. There was nothing temporary about Saul's imprint on her life, it was always present...like a watermark on expensive stationary.

She left Matt and walked ghostly streets guarded by tall trees with thick crowns...alley after alley after alley...thinking of nothing and everything.

In a dark doorway, a man pressed against a woman and a bottle clinked against a brick wall. His laughter sounded like Saul's, but it wasn't.

And, in a sky crowded with stars, she saw constellations like traces of footsteps footsteps that disappeared when she blinked.


End file.
